Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Lebanon does not accept Jews as humans

The Lebanese passport of Yaacoub Larmen, a Jew born in 1904 (photo: al-Sharq al-Aswat)

The public face of the 'Lebanese Jewish community', Isaac Arazi, has been proclaiming its rebirth while denying that Lebanese Jews have any links to Israel. But three other 'clandestine' Jews tell A-sharq al Aswat that some in Lebanon do not accept Jews as human beings. (With thanks: Sharon)

(..) The perceived relationship between Lebanon’s Jews and the Jewish
‘homeland’ to the south raises major problems for some Lebanese.
Speaking forcefully, Arazi said, “To be clear, if our allegiance was to
Israel, then we would not stay here another moment.” He explicitly
denied any relation to those who wish to live on the land of Palestine,
stressing that “not all Jews are Zionists. Our identity is Lebanese and
we belong to Lebanon, a hundred percent.”

But Sonia, a Lebanese Jew in her sixties, differed from Arazi. She told Asharq Al-Awsat that, in her opinion, “there is no Zionist or Jewish; Jews are all one and they cannot evade their identity.”

“After the emergence of major hostility between Arabs and Jews, my
husband’s family deprived me of my children because of my Jewish
heritage,” Sonia continued. “They fought me using all forms of
psychological torture. I left my family, who had chosen to go and live
in Israel, in order to stay in Lebanon with my husband and children. But
the consequences of the Israeli–Arab conflict show no mercy for my
existence as a human being.” (My emphasis)

Sonia said that she did not care about the isolation imposed on the
community, ending her comments unequivocally. “When I die, I want to be
buried in a Jewish cemetery with a Jewish rabbi praying over me,” she
said. “The Torah is my sacred text, and Judaism is my religion. I will
never give that up.”

According to official statistics published in 2003, there were only
60 official members of the so-called Israeli community in Lebanon. More
accurate statistics, however, indicate that this number is closer to
1,500, with most members officially switching to other religions in
order to avoid persecution. One such clandestine member of Lebanon’s
“Israeli community” is Ibrahim, nicknamed the “tailor of the princes.”

The August 24, 1922, edition of a Lebanese Jewish newspaper called the “Jewish Universe.” (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Qur’anic verses hang of the walls of the shop belonging to Ibrahim, a
Jewish tailor in his seventies, along with pictures which dispel any
doubts a visitor might have about his identity or religion. He sits on a
brown leather chair wearing brown wire-framed glasses. In his hand he
holds sewing tools which have accompanied him for more than 25 years—a
needle, some thread—and some slacks that need mending.

Speaking with a Syriac accent, Ibrahim welcomes the customers who
frequent his shop to buy suits and shirts because of the high quality of
his tailoring and his reputation in the neighborhood.

Ibrahim told Asharq Al-Awsat: “On paper, I am a Muslim. I
changed my religion to escape the problems and absurdities that
surrounded me. Some Lebanese do not accept our presence among them, and
we have become obsessed with living as Jews in public.”

He stopped for a moment to light his cigar and brush the dust off his
white shirt before continuing his narrative, recalling a time when
Lebanon’s Jewish community did not have to hide: “Tailoring is a family
business. I used to tailor clothes for princes, ministers and
ambassadors of all Arab nationalities. I used to carry a diplomatic
passport and receive invitations from Arab notables to accompany them to
events in order to take care of their uniforms.”

Ibrahim laughed when asked about the way of life for a Jew in
Lebanon. “Jews in Lebanon experience the same difficult social
conditions as the rest of Lebanese society, and share with them a common
concern for a country on the brink of the abyss,” he said. “Their
opportunities for friendship are limited, and they keep their
‘Jewishness’ a secret. I’m one of them.”

On a street opposite Ibrahim’s shop, two women live in a nursing
home. The home is old-fashioned, and its walls are decorated with
paintings that demonstrate good taste. A clean and uncluttered grand
piano sits inside the house with a book of sheet music perched on the
side of the bench. Small religious tokens are scattered around,
including a menorah.

A woman in her eighties spoke very slowly while sipping coffee with
milk, her hands shaking. She relived the memories of her childhood in
Wadi Abu Jamil—the former Jewish quarter of Beirut—with great sadness.
“I was a music teacher,” she said. “I used to teach students how to read
sheet music, and I loved to play the piano. My parents died and I was
left alone with my sister in Lebanon after our relatives and friends
traveled to the land of exile [Israel], leaving behind their homes and
property. They still dream of someday returning to their first and only
country: Lebanon.”

Speaking in refined French, she told Asharq Al-Awsat: “The
number of Lebanese Jews today does not exceed 200, all of whom are
between 50 and 70 years old. And the number of married women among them
is few because of the great migration, which emptied the country of its
Jewish men. It is difficult for a Jewish woman to be in a relationship
with a man from another religion who does not accept the idea of their
children, male or female, carrying the religious identity which,
according to the Jewish religion, the mother passes on to her children
at birth. So we are left without family.”

The “professor,” as she likes to be called, described Lebanon as an
“open country” and its people as “intellectuals,” denying being exposed
to any insult or abuse because of her religion. Friendship, love, and
mutual respect link her with her neighbors. “In the 1970s, many people
tried to entice us to travel to Israel with attractive offers, but the
idea was rejected outright,” she said.

“Some bigots may ignorantly judge us, but they have to remember before anything that we are human beings.”

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)